Wishes

I'm sitting here trying to outlast my heartburn, I really don't want to take anything but it's getting late. I'm afraid that after I post this I will be heading downstairs do drink some baking soda and water... yum! So tonight I was giving everyone a bath and Sydney looks up and asked if dreams come true. I thought for a minute and said "well yes some come true, why what do you mean?" She said that the other night in her dream Sleeping Beauty was her mother and they lived in the castle. I'm not sure how to take that... I'm sure Sleeping Beauty would make a fine mother, but I thought I was doing pretty well too. I couldn't tell if she was excited by the idea of having Sleeping Beauty as a mother, or whether it was something odd to dream about and wondered if there could be a slight chance it could actually happen. Mackenzie piped in with the fact that if you tell your dreams they won't come true. I asked her if she had some dreams and with a little smile she said "yes, and one has already come true". I asked her if it was that William was her boyfriend, and she giggled and said yes. I love some of the conversations I have with my kids, they are so cute and innocent and funny! A spider just ran down the wall behind the computer so I'm out!!

Birthday's Birthday's Birthday's!

So we have had birthday madness this last month at our house! The picture above is Mackenzie's 6th birthday party, on the left we have Nick and Kati's boys Carson and Spencer and next to Mackenzie is Taylor our cute neighbor who my kids adore. We asked Mackenzie what she wanted to do for her birthday and she requested eating teriyaki chicken at the restaurant near our house... so that's where the party started and then we came back for cake - but she was very clear that there was to be no ice cream... sorry dad! As you can see a couple weeks later on April 1st we had snow, Sydney thought it was pretty cool that it snowed on her 5th birthday. Later that day we went and got her ears pierced, she was a champ and didn't even cry or flinch or anything... I was suprised because she's such an over-actor! We had pizza and cake and ice cream at our house and Sydney, in true fashion, ooohhhed, aaawwwed and even squeeked over each present she opened.
About a week or so later we had an 80 degree day and decided to play outside, wash our cars and have a pic-nic. From left to right it's Sydney, Tyler, Mackenzie and Ethan... Ella was cruising around outside and dove for some sidewalk chalk and ended up with a little road rash instead...
So she ate her lunch sitting in her seat inside where I knew she would be safe. (Notice the nice red smoosh on her eye and cheek) Just this last week she started walking, we'll have pictures of that up soon! Many of you have asked why I don't have pictures of me up, mostly it's because I'm usually the one taking the pictures, but also because I'm not in the mood to plaster a big ol' picture of me on my blog... maybe I'll get one up here soon since we haven't had a family picture taken lately. We love you all and I've been so blessed to have found some of my really great friends from it's seems like forever ago... blogging is fabulous!

Kids say funny things

So the other day Tim was putting something away and he happened to bring his hand down on top of the edge of our lamp. He hit the edge so hard that the lamp broke (it's just an $8 target lamp... so I'm not crushed or anything) and I sort of laughed and said "oooohhh smooth move daddy". The kids were there and I really wanted them to see that it wasn't a big deal, so I told them to tell him good job and they thought it was funny. The next day Mackenzie came to me and asked when dad was going to make another "smooth move", I told her I hoped it wouldn't happen again soon and I think she was a little confused because we had had such a good time with dad's "smooth move" the day before. So I had to explain to her what it meant to have such a smooth daddy, but I think it only to confuse her that much more... we love our daddy smooth moves and all!

What we've been up to... finally!

O.k. for all of you who have been really bored looking at our blog site I'm finally getting around to filling you in on what's been happening! Above is the main reason for my being preoccupied... yes that's right it's baby #6. She came as quite a suprise and we didn't know anything until I was almost 3 months along due to a blood clot... crazy but true. This picture is the babies hand and arm, at this point (according to me) her name will be Brynlee Pauline Jones and she'll make her official debut the first week or two in July.

This year was Tim's 30th birthday, and man doesn't he look thrilled. He's posing with his favorite cake of all time... ICE CREAM CAKE! When I asked him if he felt 30 he said no, but that he is at the top of the hill heading down. I asked him what he meant by that and he said that his life is half way over, he only plans to live until he's in his 60's so that he doesn't have to go through all the "falling apart" that happens when you're that old. Who knew he'd been looking that far ahead, or how uplifting getting old looks to him!

Mackenzie has had a great time in kindergarten, she loves to learn and is taking it all in!! During Christmas she had the opportunity to make a marvelous marshmallow menora, this is the only picture we got because Ethan and Tyler thought that after she blew out the candles they got to eat it - hey it works that way with cake right?

So Ethan turned 2 and loved the idea of opening presents. He's always been quite the jock and wouldn't let go of the football Grampy gave him. He loved being sung to and has continued to pretend to make cakes for everyone, you know you have to blow on whatever he's holding when he comes over singing "happy birthday". He is a very handsome little guy, we love our Boogie!

This year we got a lot of snow, which is unusual for us here... but as you can see we made the most of it! All the kids loved getting into their snowsuits, however Sydney was so excited a couple times that she forgot to go to the bathroom before beginning the whole process of getting into her suit. So she got left behind for a little bit when everyone else was ready to go! They learned how to make good snow angels, they rode down the hill near our neighbors in our empty pool (you can click on our friend Nick and Jen Simon's page to see the pool sledding pics), and they even loved throwing snowballs at each other... especially Ethan. He didn't care if he was throwing a snowball at someone or getting hit by one he thought it was ALL GOOD and couldn't stop laughing!! We have loved the past few months watching our kids learn, grow and become better friends with each other, Tim and I know it's what makes life full.

I got tagged

I was just looking at all the interesting new things you all have been doing lately and I came across Karine's blog and was quite entertained at her being "tagged" until I reached the end of it and saw that she had "tagged" me... thanks a lot! So I'm supposed to give you all 7 things that are interesting about myself, this may take awhile. :)

1. I love to sing. I have been reminded of this after whipping out all the Christmas music! The kids wanted to dance the other night, so I thought oh good we'll dance to Christmas tunes however I found myself singing LONG after the dancing was done.

2. I have never been on a plane that has traveled outside the United States. Although I would love to travel I have never been all that far from home, except to Hawaii compliments of my Grandparents when I was younger.

3. I too love to eat. There isn't much I won't try and had I not gotten into flowers I would have loved to have been a food critic. I also love to watch mostly anything on the Food Network, except Rachel Ray who is too over the top for words.

4. I once walked 50 miles in under 24 hours as part of a ward pioneer thing when I was about 11 years old I think. I had tried it the year before and only walked about 25 miles or so, but I really wanted to finish the next time around. I was doing pretty well until I ended up hanging on my dad (and I do mean hanging, I had my arms around his waist and he was basically dragging me along) for the last leg, but I finished all the same!

5. I can crochet, which is such a "granny" thing to admit to, but I really love it. I mostly make baby blankets, but every now and then I've made a full - cover your body - blanket... it's relaxing as long as the yarn cooperates!

6. I have realized the older I get how sentimental I am. I love sappy movies, I enjoy songs or things that remind me of events in my past, and I enjoy looking at old pictures especially of my children. You'd think I'd be better at scrap booking and all that, but it's one thing I just have never liked doing!!

7. Growing up I was always better friends with guys, I realize now that it's because I think more like guys do. I've never been in the mix with all the "girl drama" (back-biting, scheming,sabotage... you know all that awesome stuff), I'm laid back and easygoing, and I've never done all the over analyzing and jumping to conclusions that a lot of girls do. I understand it sometimes, but man I'm glad I don't go there myself... I'd be exhausted!!!

SO there you have it, I'm not sure if those were juicy enough for you, but it's late and that's the best I could come up with. I'm going to now tag Jen, Kati, and Wendy since we hear a lot about your cute family but we want to hear more about you!!

Look-a-likes

I was looking through some of our old pictures the other night and I came across some GOOD ones. There were a couple in peticular that stuck out to me, so I thought I'd share. Above we have Ella, and a lot of people have asked me who she looks like... to me she looks like herself, but at times I think I catch a little glimps of each of the kids in her - however these next two pictures are pretty stinkin' funny!

So this is Tyler, in this picture he was about 4 months... pretty close to the same age Ella is now and they pretty much have the same body. You can probably add a few more rolls for Ella though, she's curvey!

And this is Sydney at about 5 months, she and Ella have very similar round faces... although I can't tell whether Ella's face is really round or just big at this point. There are so many other pictures I could have posted of these guys and Mackenzie and Ethan too, the "Jones genes" definitely make telling them apart difficult at times... in fact none of them are twins, but if I didn't have most of their baby pictures labeled I think I'd have a hard time telling you who is who!

BOOOOOO!

So this year for Halloween we decided to get everyone their own pumpkin, Mackenzie was really the only one who got into getting the "guts" out... everyone else was relieved to know they didn't HAVE to touch it if they didn't want to. They all had fun picking out which type of face they wanted to have Tim or I carve for them. Ella sat in her seat on the porch and watched all the festivities, she even gave her oppinion from time to time.

We had a great time trick or treating, and although they didn't get the hang of actually saying "trick or treat" when people opened their door they did manage to say "thank you" or "Happy Halloween" after getting what they were after. Ethan was a lion, Tyler was of course Spiderman, Sydney was Sleeping Beauty and Mackenzie was a White Witch.

Here are our pumpkins, I carved the one that says Creepy and the owl was carved by Tim... but it was the pumpkin Mackenzie got from the pumpkin patch on her field trip with her kidergarten class. Below Tim carved the Shere Kahn face and then down the row we have the kids pumpkins - Mackenzie wanted a beauty queen (with eyelashes... go Mom!), Sydney was going for a happy looking pumpkin, Tyler wanted something scary, and since Ethan and Ella didn't care I carved Ethan's like a ghost and Ella's to match her huge smile! We love our neighborhood and loved being able to take our kids trick or treating old school style instead of the usual trunk or treat with the ward, except if you ask Tim he would say that it really doesn't matter HOW you get the candy! Happy Halloween!!